In 2009 the court ruled in favor of L.A. developer Geoffrey Palmer, who challenged a city regulation that required apartment builders to offer a portion of their units at "below-rate" rents. Today's ruling notes that the Palmer case is not affected, and that only for-sale units can be targeted when cities want to enforce affordable-housing provisions.

The latest case came down to this: The California Building Industry Association challenged the city of San Jose's rule mandating that a portion of for-sale units in new developments be made affordable.

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... There is no reason why a municipality may not alternatively attempt to achieve those same objectives by requiring new developments to set aside a percentage of its proposed units for sale at a price that is affordable to moderate- or low-income households.

The building association said it was keeping its legal options open. It appears its main option would be attempting to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here's part of a statement sent to us by the group today:

The homebuilding industry, and by extension new-home buyers, are now being required to solve a problem not of their creation. This fuels the tortured logic that we can make housing more affordable by making it more expensive.

Making housing affordable is a societal problem that requires a broad-based, fairer solution.

The organization says that regulatory obstacles stand in the way of meeting California's demand for housing. The argument suggests that too many government constraints are the problem.

Dennis Romero has worked on staff at several magazines and newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Los Angeles Times, where he participated in Pulitzer Prize-winning coverage of the L.A. riots. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone online, the Guardian, and, as a
young stringer, the New York Times.